Like a newbie at the start of term, David Moyes steps up to big school this
morning.

It is his first official day’s work at Manchester United, following in the well-beaten tread of the most successful manager in the modern game, with the fortunes of a business worth more than a billion pounds largely dependent on what he does next. No pressure, then.

As it happens, when he arrived at Carrington early this morning, Moyes will not have found much to intimidate him in the physical surrounds.

United’s training complex is modest compared to those of Chelsea or Arsenal, which resemble, in their hi-tech gloss, the Silicon Valley campuses of leading software companies. Carrington is functional rather than grand, its facilities no more eye-popping than Moyes was used to at Everton.

Where the potential for intimidation lies is in the faces of the men he will meet formally for the first time. It is in the dressing room that his real challenge lies.

In many ways, his first day will involve a familiar working pattern for Moyes. His staff – many of whom have come with him from Goodison – will have planned the programme for the accumulation of pre-season fitness.

It will be the same scientifically derived sweat production that the players are used to. Nothing to scare the thoroughbreds there.

And as they go through their routine procedures, it will leave him time to start working his way through the formidable in-tray that will have piled up on the manager’s desk.

His first task is to sort out Wayne Rooney’s future. It is inconceivable that the pair will not already have been in contact, talking on the phone. Now that the England man is back from Glastonbury, Moyes needs immediately to establish whether he wants to stay at United.

He knows him well enough to judge whether his problems at the end of last season were temporary or terminal. He will hope the former: losing such a critical member of the team before he has even begun would send out the kind of negative message he will be anxious to avoid.

Whether or not Rooney wants to stay, however, he needs to ensure the board will back him in a marquee signing. Discussions with the new chief executive Edward Woodward will have quickly to establish this ambition.

The rumours of Cristiano Ronaldo returning from Madrid seem more like wishful thinking. But Moyes has to buy big – Robert Lewandowski, Cesc Fabregas that sort of scale, Leighton Baines is not enough – and the deal needs to be done quickly.

Not so much because the team needs urgent overhaul; he is, after all, inheriting the Premier League champions here. But because he needs to prove to everyone concerned that, despite his lack of international renown, he is capable of attracting the top talent to the club.

Not least in the dressing room. That is where his work must immediately impress. He needs to be able to look the senior players in the eye, convince them that while they may have won more in a season than he has in a lifetime, that he still offers something which can help them better themselves. Moyes is a skilled coach and an excellent man manager.

But the United players have known nothing but the best. They will seek early indication from him – in the way he talks to them, in the glint of steel in his eye, in the ease with which he slips into his role – that he is a man capable of delivering what they want: more.